A leading funeral directors is appealing for people to donate garden pots or plants and children’s creative drawings to support people who have lost loved ones during the COVID-19 outbreak.

E. Sargeant & Son Funeral Directors - who have branches in Church Street Slough and St Leonard's Road, Windsor - have joined the Slough Mutual Aid COVID support movement to turn donations into beautiful cards and flowerpots which can be delivered to the bereaved during these difficult times.

Mark Clements, an operations manager for Sargeants, said: “No one should feel alone in this outbreak, so we want to show those who have recently lost loved ones that Slough is thinking of them by delivering these cards and pots of love to their door.”

Children aged 14 and under are being asked to create the drawings and include things that will make people smile, be it rainbows, hearts or flowers, as well as the words ‘thinking of you’. There will be special prizes for the winning drawings.

Teams will turn the garden supplies donated to them by the community into ‘pots of love’, which E Sargeant & Son will deliver to doorsteps with the printed cards.

Julie Siddiqi, community organiser at Slough Mutual Aid, said: “It has been so much harder for families to properly grieve a loved one because of the pandemic and this feels like one way we can let them know that as a community in Slough, we are thinking of them."

Mark and Julie came up with the idea for Pots of Love while they were delivering leaflets around Slough offering local support to those who need it.

Pictures for the drawing competition can be sent to sloughmutualaid@gmail.com, along with the artist’s name and age and a parent’s name and phone number.

You can also email sloughmutualaid@gmail.com to donate spare pots, compost, plants or other garden features for the Pots of Love project.